


Buttered Cat Paradox

by NKMLN, ohjustdisarmalready



Series: And I 'verse [6]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alligators, And I verse Taako has a really good day, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Merle has his tiddies out but that’s not importanr, Mostly Fluff, Non-Sexual Slavery, Spoilers for Episode: e060-066 The Stolen Century Parts 1-7, fantasy florida
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:26:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27484222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NKMLN/pseuds/NKMLN, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohjustdisarmalready/pseuds/ohjustdisarmalready
Summary: Buttered cat paradox: if toast always lands on the buttered side, and a cat always lands on its feet, what if you put buttered toast on a cat's back? Maybe it has to keep turning. Maybe it never lands at all. Maybe you and your buttered-toast-cat have achieved perpetual motion and independent flight.Sometimes it's the simple things that you never think of. Sometimes, if you want something, you just have to ask.This is liberation. This is using the stupid rules you live by to defy something as commonsense as gravity. This is how Taako gets his freedom, after a hundred and twenty long years.
Relationships: Lup & Taako (The Adventure Zone), Magnus Burnsides & Lup, Magnus Burnsides & Taako
Series: And I 'verse [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/864648
Comments: 7
Kudos: 18





	Buttered Cat Paradox

**Author's Note:**

> This was all NKLMN's work :D ihis won't make, like, a ton of sense without reading at least And I Will from this 'verse, but. I love it so much. It's so good and I'm so happy,, please read and enjoy it as much as I did! (-ohjustdisarmalready)

“Hey, Lup,” Magnus says after dinner on the Starblaster one night, “I have a question that’s going to make me sound like an asshole.”

“Shoot,” she says, because she’s on her third glass of wine for the evening and asshole questions sound really fun right now.

He asks, and she considers, and then she chugs the glass and goes to look for a bottle.

He’d like shorter hair, Taako thinks idly as he thumbs through a book. The sun doesn’t set on this plane- he’s been learning one of the inhabitant’s spells to help, but it’s slow going, and it’s fucking sweltering. Gods, he hates it here. A whole plane of endless fantasy Florida. They’ve had to kick six alligators off the ship in the past week alone, and he’s always sweaty, and Merle won’t put on a shirt, and he hates this fucking plane. If he has to see one more old man dwarf nipple, he’s going to lose his mind.

He snaps his fingers. The bowl of water on his left ripples gently. “Fuck you,” he tells it.

The water ripples harder as someone knocks on his door. “If you can cast Frost Snap, you’re not allowed in here until I get it,” he calls, turning a page. “I swear to gods. I will end your fucking career.”

“Did Lucretia already get it?” Lup asks as she opens his door, apparently taking his threat as permission. Magnus shadows her, evidently hoping Taako won’t notice his presence, but he’s fine, he can’t cast Frost Snap either. Good ol’ Maggie. “Godsdamnit, that’s- how long’s it been, a day? Two?”

“Thirty-seven hours, and not a word of that leaves this room.” It’s not like he’s been counting, of course, but these things happen. He swipes his hair out of his face. “Anyway. What’s up with you two?”

Lup is quiet for a bit too long as she clambers onto his bed, and he raises his head to look at her. Hm. He doesn’t like that expression she’s wearing right now- something shuttered and guilty. “Magnus?”

“Uh,” Magnus says quietly, looking like he’d really rather be someplace else.

“Magnus.”

“Hhhhhhh-”

Lup puts a hand on his knee, and he twitches slightly, his ears flicking back as he looks at it. “Taako,” she says delicately, “I need you to do something.”

His first reaction is not fear. His second reaction is not betrayal. His third reaction is not a sudden and unnatural shock as his insides go cold. Lup would never hurt him. Lup would never make him fear her. She wouldn’t want that. He can’t be afraid. “Okay.”

He does not meet her stare, but she cups his face in her hands and tips his chin. Her eyes are desperate. “Koko. Hey. I- fuck, Magnus-”

“We can’t tell you,” Magnus says. “Um. But I’m- I’m pretty morally upright? I think? So I’m here to make sure nothing bad happens. Like, if Lup- if she starts doing weird shit, I’ll knock her out or bring you to the deck or something, but that’s- it’s not going to happen. But in case it _does,_ I’m h-”

“You’re not selling your case,” he says hoarsely. Something cold presses against his feet. Lup’s tipped over his bowl of water. He kind of wants to swear. He moves his head, shaking off Lup’s touch. “You can just say whatever it is, it’s not like I’ll be mad.”

It’s not like he’ll have the capacity to be mad. It’s not like he’s mad right now.

Lup bites her lip. “I know. It’s- this is a big one. And… I need you to not think about it, okay? I need you to just do it when I tell you to. That’s… it’s really important, Taako.”

The words roll through his mind. She phrased it like that for a reason. She _needs_ him to stop thinking. She _needs_ him to be- to be fucking mindless. And he- he trusts her, of course he trusts her, but he can’t tell if that’s because she’s trustworthy or because something in his programming won’t let him _not_ trust her.

There is a moment where he thinks about Lup making him into a weapon, and his soul flickers in distress, and he nods, because Lup needs him to, and he is terrified.

He trusts his sister. He can’t not trust his sister. These ideas hurt.

Lup can’t hurt him. He stops thinking.

The thing that Lup calls Taako reduces itself to a base state. It executes its mission’s next order without processing what that order is, and Lup watches, breathlessly, her hands clenched and white-knuckled around her brother’s. He can hear her saying his name, though it’s from a long distance. His head pounds as he blinks, drawing closer to her.

Someone is holding him. Who-

“Oh, shit, he’s back,” he hears Magnus say from just above him, and quite suddenly Lup has wrapped him in her arms. She’s shaking. He moves to hug her back, but his limbs are weighed down, and his head feels like it’s full of wool, and the room is shadowed differently than it was just a minute ago. He can’t put these things together. In a moment of terror, he manifests his soul, and it hangs in front of him, leaning towards Lup as always, and the relief closes his eyes for him.

She didn’t take it back. She would never do that to him. It’s okay.

Oh, gods, is she crying?

“Lulu?” He blinks a few times and tries again to hug her back. Still nothing. That concerns him, although he still feels a little like he’s floating. “What- ow, fuck-”

“I thought you were dead, dude,” he hears Magnus croak as the breath gets squeezed out of him for a moment. “Ohhhh my gods. Holy shit. I thought I broke you.”

Lup still hasn’t stopped hugging him. He thinks he’s sitting in Magnus’s lap, which he _absolutely_ wasn’t doing a minute ago. He arches his back to stretch. “Ch’boys a little tougher than... whatever the _fuck_ you two did. Holy shit. Lup, I can’t feel my legs, d’you-”

“Yes,” she chokes. “Fuck off, I live here now.”

“No, you don’t. Come on.” He tries again to move his arms- third time’s the charm. He pulls her closer, so that she’s not giving him pins and needles quite so badly. “Wow, you’re really torn up, huh? I’m not mad, Lulu, what’d you do?”

Lup has gone still. Before he can acknowledge it, she pulls back to look at him, tears still tracking down her face, her jaw hanging open in a little ‘o’ of astonishment.

“What?”

Her eyes gleam. He registers, suddenly, that he has been sitting here for hours. He still can’t remember why. She glances down for a split second before sitting on his knees again and looking at him fiercely. He stares back, uncomprehending.

“Lup, what the shit, that hurts, get off-”

She screams, clapping a hand over her mouth as she registers what she’s done, what he’s _said._ She’s crying again. He doesn’t know why. He’d- he’d like her to stop crying. He’d like to know what’s going on.

_Once her brother has gone entirely too still, she takes out a piece of parchment from somewhere in her jacket and reads it over, once, twice. It can see her eyes moving._

_“I order you to have a free will unbeholden to me or anyone else,” she whispers, and its pupils contract, and for the last time, it obeys._

He’s shaking.

“Lup,” he starts quietly, “Did we go to fantasy college and fantasy grad school and do dubious fucking fantasy metaphysics and join _fucking fantasy NASA_ on a _doomsday mission_ because you never thought to _fucking ask me-”_

She nods.

“I HAD TO TAKE SO MANY MIDTERMS BECAUSE OF YOUR DIPSHITTERY,” he yells, and she’s laughing through her tears, and Magnus is holding them both and his first act as a free man is to roast his sister until she falls off the bed, shaking with laughter.

“That’s it,” Lup tells him a few days later on the deck of the ship. She runs a hand over his freshly-buzzed scalp, snapping off the fantasy clippers as she does. “It’s all fuzzy. You’re really gonna keep it like this until the next cycle?”

He reaches up and feels it for himself, considering. Hm. It _is_ fuzzy. “I’m not sure yet,” he tells her. “Probably gonna fuck around some more.”

“If you want to experiment, you should really regrow it.”

He grins out at the horizon. “You know what, Lulu?”

“What?”

“Fucking make me.”


End file.
